I am very thankful not to be in Michelle Obama's shoes right now.

Don't get me wrong, I have a tremendous amount of respect for this lady. Her resume is stellar. Her bearing is regal. And I suspect that she would make a great coffee buddy. But I would not want to have the weight of black womanhood unfairly thrust upon my shoulders just because my husband happened to be making a historic run for president.

By many measures, black women have made tremendous gains in the past 40 years. For example, the proportion of black women over 24 who completed four years of college rocketed from 4.4 percent in 1967 to 19 percent in 2007. Despite such progress, and despite the prominence of such women as Oprah Winfrey and Condoleezza Rice, black women still face the indignity of gendered racial stereotypes.

We have been maligned as unattractive and unfeminine. When we are seen as attractive, we are perceived to be excessively promiscuous. We are perceived to be the backbone of black families, but we are also charged with emasculating black men, with having too many children out of wedlock, and with being responsible for the breakdown of the black nuclear family in general. Black women get praised for their perceived assertiveness, but we are constantly maligned for being abrasive and uncooperative.

These stereotypes have been embedded in American popular culture for more than a century. The mammy figure is a fixture of classic American literature and movies and until recently, even greeted us each morning on our pancake boxes and syrup bottles. Sensual black women have been distorted as jezebel temptresses on the big screen and as irresponsible welfare mothers in public policy debates.

The sharp-tongued shrew Sapphire was the lead female character on the first black television show ("Amos 'n Andy"), and she is reincarnated every time a reality television producer edits footage or makes casting decisions to create conflict between a black female cast member and her white co-stars.

Given the long-standing history of such stereotypes against black women, we should not have been surprised that some have tried to paint Michelle Obama as Every Black Female Stereotype, instead of as Everywoman or as the potential first lady that she is.

Mrs. Obama has been called unpatriotic. Fox News refused to acknowledge that she is married and that her children were not born out of wedlock when it referred to her as "Obama's baby mama." There are apocryphal claims that she uses the term "whitey" to malign whites. And now, she is depicted on the cover of the New Yorker magazine in an afro, fatigues and a machine gun as though she is the second coming of Stokely Carmichael or Huey Newton.

In general, a negative depiction of a candidate's spouse is not that big a deal. Candidate spouses are very much like vice presidents. Neither one can really make or break a ticket; the candidate clearly matters most. However, in a year in which a black candidate is a major party nominee for the first time, the conventional rules may not apply.

In many ways, Michelle Obama represents the antithesis of her husband. She cannot escape race the way her husband has tried to escape race. She cannot invoke a white parent or an exotic upbringing to deflect racial anxiety. And because the stereotypes leveled against black women are less visceral (though no less demeaning) than the more brutal stereotypes of black men, they are harder to identify, harder to counter and more likely to be successfully used to cast subconscious doubt about Barack Obama's fitness to be president.

In short, Barack Obama could easily deflect the guilt-by-association charges during the Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres incidents, but it is much harder to escape guilt-by-association when the associate is his wife of 15 years.

Michelle Obama could very well become the human barometer for the impact of racial anxiety on vote choice. As we saw in a New York Times/CBS news poll released last week, blacks and whites agree that America is ready to elect a black president. However, Barack Obama's favorability ratings diverge wildly among blacks and whites. Obama enjoys high favorability ratings among blacks, but more whites have an unfavorable view of Obama than have a favorable view of him. If Michelle Obama continues to be a successful target of racially tinged criticism, then this could have a negative impact on her husband's chance at getting elected.

This is why the New Yorker cover, while perhaps well-intentioned, was ill-advised. The magazine's editors have defended the cover, arguing that it is a satire of the ridiculous charges leveled against the Obamas in recent months. Editors clearly hope that people will look at the cover and realize that the scenario depicted is farcical.

Unfortunately, many people miss the fact that the cover was intended to be a mockery. More than 10 percent of those surveyed for a recent Newsweek poll believe that Barack Obama is a practicing Muslim, despite his campaign's best efforts to dispel such gossip. If people can still believe that rumor, then they can certainly internalize vicious and false smears about Michelle Obama that are rooted in centuries-old stereotypes about black women.

The Obama campaign responded appropriately by attacking the New Yorker cover cartoon immediately. However, the condemnation of the cover could have been more forceful. Much of the media outcry has focused on the religious depiction of Barack Obama or on the general tastelessness of the cartoon.

The Obama campaign would do better to vigorously and explicitly challenge any depiction of Mrs. Obama that is sexist and racist, including this cartoon. It is precisely that type of subtle and insidious attack that could be the Democratic campaign's undoing if it is allowed to fester in the minds of undecided voters. Besides, it is time to bury the negative depictions of black women in popular culture once and for all.

> Next week: Cindy McCain's impact on the campaign

 ELIZABETH LANDT / Staff
an illustration of Michelle Obama